Is Bush Planning a Blitzkrieg Attack on Iran?

There are a number of diaries over at Daily Kos -- one by Maccabee, one by Clammyc, and another by MLDB, among others -- that cull from various news and personal reports a scary amount of evidence that the Bush/Cheney administration is planning a massive air strike against Iran in the very near future. War rumors have been floated for months, and now the London Sunday Times is reporting a "Pentagon 'three-day blitz plan for Iran".

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said....

Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

This is a war we must do everything politically possible to stop. An attack on Iran, with blitzkrieg style "shock and awe" would be another massive war crime, branding the United States as a rogue, war-crazy nation. We will suffer from this for generations.

Complicity by the Democrats in Congress will seal their fate as any kind of legitimate opposition. We will be looking into the abyss. The American people will be tested as never before.

Will they sit by passively as the country degenerates into a frank out-and-out military dictatorship, run by a modern czar/Ceasar? I know a lot of people are hoping this latest Iran war scare is just more saber-rattling by the bellicose Bushies. But in any case, with 100,000s dead in Iraq, with cholera now unleashed in the chaos of Iraq refugee camps, and sectarian civil war continuing unabated, with torture continuing in U.S. run prison camps around the world, we are already very far down the road to barbarism.

Political lessons seem always to be harsh. The insane dismissal of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle -- with the latter smothered under the ruins of Stalinism and the descent of nationalist struggle into sectarianism and revanchist genocide around the world -- is bringing about a world wide catastrophe. Out of the ashes of George W. Bush's militarist imperialism will come the rebirth of a new socialist battle, as the pretense of "democratic" capitalism is revealed for what it really is: a cover for naked aggression for national wealth and power.

By the way, for more on the Nixon Center (NC), whose spokesman is quoted in Times article above, check out SourceWatch. For one thing, NC's "honorary chairman" is none other than Henry Kissinger, and its Board of Directors includes Robert F. Ellsworth, Nixon's old ambassador to Nato, later Deputy Secretary of Defense under Ford; Conrad Black; Leslie Gelb; Pat Roberts; Brent Scowcroft; and -- oh, looky see, main Democratic Party caucus member and screaming right-wing hawk Joseph I. Lieberman.

For his part, Alexis Debat used to be a senior desk officer for the French Ministry of Defense. He moved to the U.S. in 2003, and has become a "senior terrorism consultant" to ABC News. He also works for the intelligence community here, as a contractor for the Rand Corporation.

The earmarks of the Pentagon and the intelligence community are all over this Iran war campaign. It will take everything American society has to push back against the militaristic clique that run this country.